Savannah Waterfront outlines St. Patrick's Day plans

Thursday

Mar 8, 2018 at 6:11 PMMar 8, 2018 at 6:11 PM

Will Peebles @willpeeblesSMN

In a week’s time, Savannah will be more crowded, more difficult to navigate and a lot more green.

Savannah’s St. Patrick’s Day festival - the city’s biggest event of the year - requires a great deal of coordinating and planning. Every year, the Savannah Waterfront Association meets with business owners in the festival area to prepare them for the busy penultimate week.

On Thursday, the group held its annual information session at the Hyatt Regency.

This year’s two-day festival will take place on March 16 and 17.

Assistant Director of the Office of Special Events, Film & Tourism Eddie Grant said light towers, barricades, stages and other safety and performance platforms will be placed on River Street and in the City Market area starting on Wednesday.

Parking on the ramps leading to River Street will be restricted in some areas as early as Wednesday to facilitate the placement of these items.

“Come Thursday, there’ll be closures along the River Street ramps so that we can get the deliveries in, loading in and everything else. Those will be manned by (Savannah Police Department),” Grant said.

River Street will be closed from Friday until the end of the festival. Traffic will also be rerouted in City Market to accommodate for the performance stages in the area.

The parade will begin at 10:15 a.m. St. Patrick’s Day. Grant said the parade is usually over about 2:30 p.m., depending on how fast the parade entries move.

Grant urged festival goers to carpool downtown to limit the number of vehicles in the area.

Police

Savannah police Sgt. Dana Purvis is the special events coordinator for the department and is heading up their festival arrangements.

Purvis said officers in the festival area will be cracking down on underage drinking this year.

“We will have officers down there specifically for underage drinking. We’re really harping on that. We had a lot of underage drinking last year, so if there are children underage drinking, they will be either cited or taken to jail,” Purvis said.

Wristband enforcement for open container drinking in the controlled festival area will run from 10 a.m. until midnight on Friday. On Saturday, it will begin after the parade.

“If we see individuals drinking without the wristbands, we’re not going to haul them off to jail. We’re going to give them a chance to go get a wristband or pour their drink out if they refuse to get a wristband. We’re not trying to put too many people in jail in reference to that.”

No bottles are allowed in the festival area - only plastic cups.

No pets are allowed in the festival area unless they belong to downtown residents or are a registered service animal.

Traffic

Steve Henry, the city’s traffic and engineering administrator, said 300 traffic control barricades will be placed along Bay and Whitaker streets to keep pedestrians on the sidewalks and out of the streets.

Message boards will be placed at all Bay Street approaches to inform drivers that the road will be closed to traffic during the festival.

When folks are leaving the festival, Henry said, they should pursue routes other than turning left onto Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to go to Interstate 16, as that route tends to be heavily congested.

Henry said the eastbound left turn onto Presidents Street from Truman Parkway will be open next week.

“It’s going to be a busy weekend next weekend,” Henry said. “If you’re driving, be patient. If you’re walking, be careful.”